Orange Lily: Chapter I

“Here came the brown Phoenician,

The man of trade and toil—

Here came the proud Milesian,

A hungering for spoil;

And the Firbolg and the Comry,

And the hard, enduring Dane.

And the iron Lords of Normandy,

With the Saxons in their train.”

Davies.

“She’s not a dull or cold land;

No! she’s a warm and bold land,

Oh! she’s a true and old land—

This native land of mine.”

Davies.

Lily Keag was the eldest-born child of Mr. James Keag, of the parish of Ballyboly, in the county of Down. A worthy, quiet man was the latter in character; by occupation, a small farmer; and as to worldly honor, the brethren had, years ago, made him Master of the Ballyboly Orange Lodge.

“Boys—O!” her friend Tom Coulter, of eight years’ experience in the world, used to exclaim to Lily, who was herself then only aged six. “Boys—O! but it’s grand to see yer da riding on the ould gray mare on the Twalfth of July; with all the lodges marching and the flags and drums beating, and him with the scarlet cloak about him like King William himself.”

And Lily would reply, with brightening eyes and head raised erect.

“Ay, Tom; it is that!”

For, all through the few summers she remembered, her small mind had been brimming over with pride in, and reverence for, her father’s great position. When the May nights grew to be warm, and the “boys” began to drum along the lanes practising for the Twelfth, she, however tiny, had always run after them with the older children till her little legs failed for weariness. Then some evening idler often carried home the Master’s small lass in his arms, praising her as “a grand wee Orangewoman, already.”

But on the night before the great Twelfth itself, she would lie hours awake with excitement, to be roused again by the beat of the drums practising in the gray fresh dawn long before the sun was up. Then later, when the morning was well on, the whole countryside would turn out of doors to see their own lodge defile gayly down the road, its three flags flying and their own men just marvels in scarfs and cockades like yearly glorified grubs, marching to join more lodges, and go in procession to the meeting-place for that year. All the grown-up lasses went with the Orangemen, too, in new dresses, most with orange and blue ribbons on their bonnets; only the steady-minded folk and the “childer” stayed behind.

Hey! but Lily was proud and glad that there had once been a battle of the Boyne. She had a vague idea that her father must have been at it, but was shame-faced when she once inquired about it, he had laughed so much. She asked Tom Coulter’s opinion, but he didn’t know either; only he was certain sure the great King William was “da” to our Queen Victoria.

Our little lass’s real name, as her father told most folks, was Lily-un or Lily-ann, just whichever way you liked to pronounce it; and he was justly proud that it was “so entirely oncommon.” For many of the Ballyboly farmers had been decidedly studious, and had clubbed together to buy papers from London, with pictures of the most bloody murders and stories of the very highest life, the writers of which scorned to touch with their pens any one beneath a baronet. In one of these, Lilian was the name of a duchess in her own right, whom a mad marquis tried to marry, then murder in a dozen different ways, till she was triumphantly rescued by a Prince of the Blood, whom she had stooped to love in the disguise of a common earl. And this Duchess Lilian may be justly considered our Lily’s god-mother, since the honest farmer’s fancy was so taken with her history that he at once named his new-born child after her.

Lily wasn’t pretty. She had a shock of yellow-reddish hair, a wide mouth, and freckles; but her hair was neatly combed, her face smiling, and her skin, as Mistress Keag declared, “if you rightly took note to it between the freckles, was as white as milk, and her cheeks as red as strawberries.” And, though her mother had died early in her young life, was still merry, since her step-mother was a hearty soul, a trifle untidy, “out-of-the-common” kindly; whilst Lily had been born with the knack of fitting her soft temper to everybody else’s sharp mind.

The child toddled all day by her father’s side in early summer, when the long grass fell in swathes under the mower’s scythe and shared amply at noon his dinner of potato-bread and butter-milk. Again, in the summer, she would stand prattling to him, while the farm-men, and women too, were pulling the flax that grew higher than her waist, of so fresh a green that the very color was enough to praise God for. She would pluck herself a posy of its tiny blue lint-flowers, and press them to her breast, chuckling because “they were so bonny.” And when the strong backs ached with stooping, the sun glared, her child’s laugh made many a hard face in the field smile; so she unwittingly did her part already for good. But best she liked the harvest-time when her da reaped ahead of his men, and she pretended to bind to him or played hide and seek in the stooks. Then the yearly night-dance in the barn, when the fields were bare, and the turkeys wandered through the stubble! How her life was changeful and pleasant!

Tom Coulter, or “Tammy Cowltert,” as his name was generally pronounced by those who spoke as broad as their Scotch ancestors did, was her dearest companion. He was an impudent, pleasant, but unfortunately a dirty boy, so her step-mother considered him a vulgar acquaintance for Lily; besides, his father was a poor cottager and ne’er-do-well, sometimes driven to break stones for a livelihood. But the friendship had begun this wise: One day wee Lily was going to see him when she met Tom limping painfully along, with a wry face, yet glancing black eyes that were searching for old birds’ nests in the hedge, bees’ nests in the ditch—for I verily believe in those days he would have tried to kill flies if he had been dying, and have wished to possess the death-worm that ticked for himself as a nice curiosity in beasties.

“What’s wrang wi’ ye, Tom?” cried out the affrighted child; for his jacket was off, his shirt torn, and his shoulders finely tattooed with bruises.

“Da whaled me,” replied Tom, short and careless as any young Spartan. Then, to her shocked reiterated questions, he deigned to explain that the baby in their cottage, which Tom evidently considered an impertinent late intruder into his home, spoiling his pleasure in many ways, had died; and as it was a sickly thing, Tom, being a very small boy then, thought “a good riddance too.” “But,” he now went on to explain, with the air of a practical man aggrieved and injured by a sentimental section of society, “father he took to the cryin’; and mother she took to the cryin’; and Aunt Marget and Uncle William-Thomas they fell to the cryin’. But deed I couldna cry, for I saw naething to cry aboot; so da just took the big stick and threshed me till make me cry!”

And with a diabolical grin, Tom proceeded to frighten Lily’s tender mind by making a cut on his arm bleed again, and displaying some of the welts made by the whacking that had been meant to relieve the paternal grief and arouse tender feelings in the body, at least, of this unnatural child.

Lily’s eyes filled up with pity, her little breast heaved, and with a loud sob she wailed—

“Och, anee! anee! anee!”

“Oh, and now you’re at the cryin’ too!” exclaimed Tom in dismay. “Then I’ll be off. I’ll take to the cryin’ for no man!”

Nevertheless, with all his hardihood, he only limped away two paces, and allowed himself to be appeased by a tearful assurance from Lily that she wouldn’t cry no more if he’d stop making the nasty blood come. He even accepted half of the big farl of buttered oatcake, which was already nicked all round by her teeth, and said she was a nice wee gurl.

When school was over, Lily, tripping back with small-booted feet up the lonely lane, found the solitary little sufferer paddling his toes, that were always bare, in the cows’ water-hole; and was persuaded by him to do likewise, and to eat unripe blackberries and haws, and had pains that night in consequence. “They played theirselves finely,” in fact, as Mistress Keag severely remarked when Lily came in well muddied that night—she that was the pattern small lass of a mile around for her tidiness, always wore boots, and had been even known to cry when her “pinny” for school was not clean. Verily, a marvel of a wee girl in that country of unkempt, bare-toed childer; but then her mother had been a maid, and once in service in England, and the English were over-any-thing particular, folk here heard tell, so perhaps hers was an inherited peculiarity.

Order the new paperback edition of Orange Lily which includes an introduction, footnotes and a glossary of words by Dr Philip Robinson. The book also includes the short stories The Witch of Windy Hill and An Old Maid’s Marriage.